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After nearly a decade of haunting screens with its dark, satirical takes on the near future, Black Mirror returns with a seventh season that feels both timely and thematically layered. This new collection of six episodes explores familiar Black Mirror territory—technology gone awry, the fragility of memory, societal inequity—but through fresher lenses, featuring a strong cast and some intriguing, if occasionally uneven, storytelling.
While the show continues to lean into sci-fi horror and cautionary tech tales, Season 7 is notable for balancing the surreal with strikingly realistic concerns—from healthcare access and misinformation to AI’s place in creative work.
Below is a full breakdown of each episode, complete with synopses, performance highlights, and my personal take on how each installment fits into the Black Mirror canon.
Episode 1: Common People
Starring: Rashida Jones, Chris O’Dowd, Tracee Ellis Ross
Rating: 8/10
Season 7 opens with a grounded, unsettling episode about the privatization of healthcare, an issue disturbingly close to reality. The story follows a woman whose tiered healthcare subscription plan resembles a streaming service model: basic plans for basic care, with premium options reserved for the wealthy. When a crisis hits, the fine print reveals just how disposable certain lives have become.
TIR Take:
This was a solid first episode, strange, but realistic. It parallels how streaming services increase their prices and introduce new tiers but applies that logic to something as vital as healthcare. It forces the viewer to think about how normalized these models have become. Unlike a streaming service, you can’t simply opt out of medical treatment in an emergency. But for many people, that’s exactly what happens, either because of affordability or debt. Tracee Ellis Ross adds levity to an otherwise dire storyline, while Chris O’Dowd plays a familiar everyman role, similar to his character in The Big Door Prize, bumbling through a system he doesn’t fully understand.
Episode 2: Bête Noire
Starring: Sienna Kelly, Rosy McEwen, Michael Workeye, Ben Bailey Smith, Amber Grappy
Rating: 6.5/10
This episode is a chaotic blend of conspiracy theories, trauma, and alternate realities. It centers around a woman whose childhood bullying trauma manifests in disturbing ways as she begins to blur the lines between perception and paranoia. With nods to the Mandela Effect and keyboard warrior culture, the episode tries to tackle a lot, perhaps too much.
TIR Take:
This one landed near the bottom of my list—my second-to-last pick out of the season. While the themes are undeniably Black Mirror, it felt like a mashup of several storylines: bullied genius turned aggressor, systemic racism, mental health stigma, and a reality-bending twist. Some parts were compelling, but the episode leaned more into metaphor than narrative clarity. The result felt disjointed, almost like a sci-fi anthology within a single episode.
Episode 3: Hotel Reverie
Starring: Issa Rae, Awkwafina, Harriet Walter, Emma Corrin
Rating: 7.5/10
In Hotel Reverie, a Hollywood actress (Issa Rae) uses Redream, an advanced AI technology, to immerse herself in a remake of a 1940s romance film. As she steps into the simulated world and assumes the role of the male lead, the story takes a turn when the AI character she’s acting opposite begins to show signs of awareness. Echoing elements of Total Recall, the episode questions memory, identity, and what happens when fiction blurs with reality.
TIR Take:
This one hit me in two ways. As a sci-fi lover and cinephile, I appreciated the concept, a film world within a film, where the AI becomes aware. That was fresh. However, Issa Rae’s performance didn’t quite land for me. Her character delivered exposition too quickly and broke narrative immersion, which lessened the emotional impact. The pacing also felt off. That said, the later part of the episode, with the Clara/Dorothy and Brandy forming a complex bond, posed some meaningful dilemmas. How much awareness is to be acknowledged as life? What would have happened if Brandy chose to stay, and the tech was turned off?
In addition, the episode raised questions about the fusion of creativity and artificial intelligence. How much tech is too much in art? Should AI be allowed to replace human creativity in acting, set design, or writing?
That being said, Hotel Reverie was a solid episode and presented a continuation of themes from previous seasons like Joan Is Awful.
Episode 4: Plaything
Starring: Will Poulter, Michele Austin, Peter Capaldi, Lewis Gribben, James Nelson-Joyce
Rating: 5/10
Set in a retro-futuristic landscape reminiscent of early video games, Plaything follows a troubled programmer caught in a web of his own making. While the episode aims to explore the dangers of unchecked AI and mental instability, it struggles to deliver an original message.
TIR Take:
This episode didn’t work for me. It was in fact, my least favorite episode of the season. The acting felt flat, and the narrative arc offered very little that we haven’t seen in past Black Mirror episodes or general sci-fi stories. The retro aesthetic was interesting but underused. Will Poulter was a highlight, but his character was too briefly explored. The message, something about our growing reliance on digital escapism and how it can harm mental health, was heavy-handed, and the execution didn’t make it feel fresh.
What did I miss on this episode? Did you enjoy it?
Episode 5: Eulogy
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Patsy Ferran
Rating: 7/10
Following the death of a former love, a man is invited to use a new tech service that retrieves memories from multiple people to create a dynamic eulogy. But what happens when the truth clashes with the version of events he’s held onto for decades?
TIR Take:
This one was a quiet but powerful entry. It centers on memory, how we remember or misremember, what we choose to forget, and the narratives we tell ourselves to avoid accountability. Paul Giamatti delivers a strong performance as a man unraveling his own mythology. The tech here is familiar territory for Black Mirror, but the emotional weight gives it new resonance. If we could reconstruct our memories through other people’s perspectives, would we still want to remember? Or would we rather protect our illusions?
Episode 6: USS Callister: Infinity
Starring: Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, Billy Magnussen, Milanka Brooks, Osy Ikhile
Rating: 8/10
The final episode revisits the world of USS Callister from Season 4, expanding the story and reuniting the core cast. Now fully self-aware and free, the virtual crew faces a new dilemma that brings into question whether game clones deserve rights, and what happens when creators and creations become indistinguishable.
TIR Take:
This and Episode 1 were my favorites. It was fun, nostalgic, and satisfying. I even went back to rewatch the original USS Callister episode to refresh the plot. Great merge of star trek with gamer tech and virtual reality and of course capitalism. This installment builds on that foundation beautifully. The ethical questions, about clone rights, about control, about whether a digital consciousness is “real”, or disposable is compelling. There’s no clear singular hero or villain, which makes the narrative all the more engaging. There is a blurred good guy bad guy between Walton and Daly, duly the same question posed to their respective game clones. Both essentially turning out to be bad guys. With the crew now living inside Nanette’s head, there’s room for even more stories in this world. It felt like the most complete and rewarding episode of the season.
Final Thoughts
Season 7 doesn’t reinvent Black Mirror, but it doesn’t need to. It returns to the show’s roots, uncomfortable what-ifs, slippery moral terrain, and just enough future tech to make it all plausible. Though not every episode lands, the best ones strike a balance between realism and speculative horror, giving us both ethical dilemmas and entertaining narratives.
Episode Ranking (Best to Least)
- USS Callister: Infinity
- Common People
- Hotel Reverie
- Eulogy
- Bête Noire
- Plaything
What did you think of the season? Which episodes stuck with you the most?
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